L. K. Samuels on Freedom

"If people don’t have free agency, they become mere chattel to the herdsman who wields the biggest horsewhip."

"But after his victory over Scotland’s militia, I asked whether England now blossomed with freedom. He hesitated. We both knew that he had arrested his opponents and censored his critics. I asked the question again. Finally, he said, ‘Aye, there be freedom in England. I may do whatever I wish.’"

"Order is not universal. In fact, many chaologists and physicists posit that universal laws are more flexible than first realized, and less rigid—operating in spurts, jumps, and leaps, instead of like clockwork. Chaos prevails over rules and systems because it has the freedom of infinite complexity over the known, unknown, and the unknowable."

"Your father reminded me of Lord Oliver Cromwell some fifty years ago in London. Lord Cromwell spoke of liberty. He fought the king to free England of tyranny. But after Lord Cromwell’s Ironsides had defeated the monarch, he turned ruthless. It was as if the monarchy had never been destroyed. Indeed, nothing had changed."

"The old parable about trapping wild pigs in the forest is prophetic. To capture and control the wild and free, one needs only to lay out a spread of free food while secretly constructing a sturdy fence around the perimeter. Every day, as the animals munch on freebies, the fence’s length expands until it has surrounded the oblivious victims. Once the trap is sprung, it is the trapper who feasts on the foolish. This anecdote illustrates how coercive socialism works to enslave a populace through perennial promises of ‘free stuff.’"

"There were two French Revolutions—the first stage instigated by free-Left elements imbued with toleration, anti-authoritarianism, secularism, individualism, liberty and the revolutionary individualism of Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. The second stage of the French Revolution devolved into a bloody, terroristic dictatorship, an all-powerful state amidst a cult of personality, such as the so-called incorruptible Maximilien Robespierre, in a counter-revolution that was anti-liberal and antithetical to the Lumières movement, which became the Age of Enlightenment."

"To many in the Middle East, Nazi Germany was considered the natural ally of the Arab and Muslim world. When Amin al-Husseini finally traveled to Europe in 1941, he first met with Mussolini in Italy and declared his intentions to ally with the Axis. A number of high-level Nazi leaders learned of this encounter and invited the Palestinian leader to visit Hitler in Berlin. Hitler was interested in the Arabic nations and their rising animosity towards Jews and the British and agreed to meet with Amin al-Husseini on November 28, 1941. In that meeting, Al-Husseini pressed for Arab independence, particularly the liberation of Palestine from the British. He also sought to prevent the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine, as had been proposed by the British government."

"Positive rights require physical force or intimidation in order to enforce these alleged ‘rights.’ In essence, they are faux rights that violate other people’s rights. Positive rights actually don’t exist; they are fictitious, a fraudulent tactic which subverts choice. Rights are not obligations. To physically force someone to give financial benefits to another makes a mockery of the principles of freedom of action, freedom of choice, and the right to be free from aggression. Rather, the license to institute compulsory practices leads to legalized and institutionalized aggression and robbery. Enabling political structures to plunder one in the name of others perverts the meaning of individual human rights."

"Yet it was the majority-led Girondins who had spearheaded the revolution and challenged the establishment. They accomplished far more than did the Montagnards. After toppling the king, the Girondins rushed into an abolitionist spree fueled by liberty, dissolving the last vestiges of aristocratic privilege, the system of church tithes, dues owed to local landlords, and personal servitude. The radical liberals also released the peasants from the seigneurial dues, which helped tenant farmers buy their own private farmland. Next, they turned their abolitionist gun-sights on the guild system that blocked entry to markets, as well as ‘tax farming,’ where private individuals would be licensed to collect taxes for the state while taking a large share for themselves."